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I have been listening to the music of Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson for the past few days. I discovered that I had not ripped all of their music to my hard drive, so I did so and then proceeded to play all the way through their music while I exercised. I do love this music.
Robert Johnson
For the the third Saturday in a row, Eileen and I worked at church photocopying (legally), collating, numbering and stuffing anthems for the choir. Earlier in the day I finished picking hymns and anthems through Easter Sunday. I just emailed the pastor, the secretary, the assistant pastor and the youth choir director a copy of this work. It was a huge task to find anthems I could do with a shifting small group of choristers, but I believe I now have a plan for the hymns and anthems.
I also spent an hour or so cleaning the kitchen. It kind of felt like the same sort of task as picking hymns and anthems: something I have been wanting to get done.
“….Washington, a city, he has said, ‘where so many people are lost in thought because it’s such unfamiliar territory.’ ”
and of course his recent clarifying comment about US military commitment in Libya
Mr. Gates told Congress. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone. And then you can fly planes around the country and not worry about our guys being shot down. But that’s the way it starts.”
I ran across an interesting idea about connecting online:
Curating as in “A person who manages, administers or organizes a collection, either independently or employed by a museum, library, archive or zoo” en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curator
Click on the pic above of Steve Rosenbaum to go to an article by him called "Content is no longer king"
I heard Steve Rosenbaum talking about this on a podcast from last week’s On The Media Show (link to transcript and audio).
If I understand the idea, it is that when people link and recommend articles on line, they are “curating.” This is different from finding material via search engines like Google since Google uses ‘bots and super secret formulas to rank pages on their search results (algorithms).
This strikes at the heart of one of the uses I have admired and proposed over and over for the web: connecting and learning about stuff. Rosenbaum seems to be in touch with the idea that “monetizing” everything online drains content at some level.
Howard Reingold has been teaching how to sift through the web to the gold of actual reliable content for years (see his Crap Detector 101 article here for a taste). He applies critical thinking in a concrete way. Reingold is the reason I began using Twitter. He defined it as the “on-going present.” I continue to use it that way.
You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in. Heraclitus
Which leads me to all sorts of random “curators” like myself who pass along ideas and links. It’s pretty easy to sift out the totally monetized tweeters not to mention the porn tweeters. This morning I am currently following 1,098 people and organizations on Twitter. I have made lists that allow me to further sift these people. The most important one for me is the “family” list in which I can see if people in my extended family are commenting via Twitter. But I also have lists of “good links” like Reingold, “news,” “conservatives,” “liberals,” and “church musicians.”
I “sift” the web using the techniques I have developed as a critical news reader and consumer over the years. I see PR, propaganda, slanted reporting, partisan framing, and other methods of distortion as basically forms of dishonesty.
Faking honesty and authenticity is not that easy if one is looking for signs of commercial origins and propaganda in consumer information. It’s not that easy to “talk like a person” as the web designer advice goes when all you’re thinking of is the “golden goose” of making lots of money with the web.
FALSE ANALOGY (apples & oranges) Description: An analogy is a partial similarity between the like features of two things or events on which a comparison can be made. A false analogy involves comparing two things that are NOT similar. Note that the two things may be similar in superficial ways, but not with respect to what is being argued.
Andy Carvin is senior strategist for NPR’s Social Media Desk. He blogs from the link above. Here’s a link to an interview with him about using Twitter to report from Libya (where no reporters are currently allowed):
Postman died in 2003. He was an early critic of the impact of the media explosion on public rhetoric and someone I followed and read. Ran across this article writing this post and had to bookmark it to read later
I think the Assange case is shaping up to be a paranoid’s dream of governments shutting down transparency. Somebody is very pissed about WikiLeaks and is moving quickly to punish the perps. Or maybe it’s just me. heh.
My trio was kind enough to indulge me and sight read through the first two movements of Mendelssohn’s C minor piano trio yesterday. Later I read through several of his organ works on the organ. I seem to have this composer on my mind a lot lately.
I continue to be a bit stressed. I had a conversation with my boss yesterday about how I am strategizing to deal with an ever dwindling number of people showing up to be in the choir. My strategy is to simplify. I have been working on changing an old arrangement of “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well.” Years ago, I took Chanticleer’s arrangement and simplified it from four parts to two part men and women choir for a church choir I was working with. I thought that in my present gig it would be more satisfying to the singers if I went back and filled in the alto and tenor parts in the arrangement. After watching an increasing number of singers skip rehearsals and miss services this season, I had the idea that the original simpler version would be probably be a better choice (and far less work for me).
The problem this choir is having is that it is dwindling in numbers. So when a few people are absent it represents a larger and larger percentage of the group that is not present. For instance this weekend I have two singers who have told me that they will not be present, a third who said he probably won’t be. Of the regulars, this leaves about 6 singers. There are a few singers who are irregular in their attendance and they might or might not be there. Also one or more of the 6 could not show due to one reason or another. This is not just a performance problem. I like to choose music that takes some preparation. When people miss Sunday they also miss the post service rehearsal. Our numbers are almost too small to really think of as a choir. Oh well. It’s what I have had to deal with a lot in my “career” as a church musician.
I have failed in my attempt to draw these singers into deeper commitment by scheduling interesting music for them to learn and sing ( William Byrd, good gospel tunes, my own compositions). The only remaining strategy is to choose material that I can do with little preparation and shifting small numbers of singers. I need to choose some of them today because I remain behind in planning.
More on recent Supreme Court rulings. I like the fact that Chief Justice Roberts talks about word meaning in his ruling and comments on the bench.
“Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, ‘that’s personal’,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “A company spokeswoman, when asked for information about the company, would not.
“In fact, we often use the word ‘personal’ to mean precisely the opposite of business-related: We speak of personal expenses and business expenses, personal life and work life, personal opinion and a company’s view.”
Both of these reports scrupulously say that Huckabee was NOT questioning the place of Obama’s birth and that he retracted his incorrect comments about Obama’s Kenya childhood (Obama was raised in Hawaii, not Kenya).
A classic example of the technique described in Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by Lakoff.
As a potential 2012 presidential candidate, Huckabee can thus have it both ways. He can remind the public of these bogus charges and disavow them at the same time.
“Bacteria like staphylococcus can be warded off with simple measures like washing hands, wearing sterile gowns and drapes, and following the proper techniques for inserting and maintaining the lines.”
I found the word, “houseman,” in Peter Gomes’ obituary. The sentence was “He worked as a houseman to help pay for his education.”
When I use the “define-colon” google search command these two definitions pop up:
Definitions of houseman on the Web:
intern: an advanced student or graduate in medicine gaining supervised practical experience (`houseman’ is a British term) wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
Houseman was a term previously used for a junior British hospital doctor now known as a house officer. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseman
But when I click on the little question mark that pops up when I highlight the word on the New York Times article, the apparently correct definition came up:
house·man(hous‘m?n‘, -m?n)
n.
A man employed for cleaning, maintenance, and other general work in a house or hotel.
Weird.
I had a very busy day yesterday. I made quiche and salad to take to share with my staff, exercised, accompanied two ballet classes and then met Eileen for drinks and supper at the pub.
Recently I purchased new shoes that have special supports in them. When the sales-person examined my feet he said that usually people with my kind of feet have a lot of back pain and other kinds of pain as a result. I don’t have any of this, but since walking and exercising in my new shoes I am experience a lot of soreness. Hopefully this is temporary.
This article by Nate Anderson on the Ars Technia website begins with this hilarious paragraph:
The Supreme Court decided (PDF) today that AT&T can’t keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; “personal privacy” rights do not apply to corporations. “We trust that AT&T will not take it personally” concluded the ruling.
Thanks to the Davepaul for this link. A bill proposed by the same person (State Representative Debbie Riddle) who “made headlines last year when she claimed unnamed FBI officials had told her that pregnant women from the Middle East were traveling to America as tourists to give birth, and then raising their children to be terrorists who could later enter the U.S. freely as citizens — so-called “terror babies,” a devious offshoot of “anchor babies.” She became somewhat infamous on the web when she stumbled repeatedly in a CNN interview about the claims, complaining later that host Anderson Cooper’s line of questioning was more intense than she had prepared for.”
Specifically “AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, City Year, Foster Grandparents and others.” I can’t understand the blind anger that is driving our Congress to cut programs for the weakest in our society. It seems to me misinformed, at best and bigoted at worst.
Got up this morning and made Banana Muffins from my new used copy of Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. They are in the oven as I write this. I over bought bananas last week. Eileen is needing soft food ever since her orthodontist installed some new braces hardware. Bananas are a good solution, but one can have too much of a good thing.
“Taking the stage to accept an Oscar for best feature length documentary last night, “Inside Job” director Charles Ferguson stuck to his film’s topic.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.” The crowd erupted in cheers.
In his documentary, Ferguson blames the crisis on out-of-control Wall Street financiers, lax regulators and business school and economics professors who lauded questionable financial industry practices while taking home millions from Wall Street firms.”
Ferguson’s first career was as a Poly-Sci PHD holder, second as an IT guy, finally he started making films.
His words in the WBUR interview describe a devastating picture of corruption and arrogance in the government, the business community and the academic world. Sooprise,sooprise.
Installed a couple of plug-ins to my Chrome browser yesterday.
The first is called “Read Later Fast.” As far as I can tell, it saves the page you are looking at for later viewing offline or online. Either way you have to access the article using the interface in the program which allows you to either see it in a frame as it was online or just view the text version (with photos). It is not saved in the cloud but rather the computer you are using which makes it less functional for me.
Click here to go web page about "Read Later Fast."
The other plug-in, “Quick Note,” holds more promise for a useful tool for me since it stores the notes on Diigo which can be accessed from any computer. You add photos to your note as well as text. Cool.
Click here to go web page where you can get "Quick Note" for Chrome.
Both plug-ins were developed by “Diigo,” the online bookmarking site I use.
I use the “Diigolet” version because Diigo was only Chrome compatible originally with this plug-in. I found this web site/program by getting bumped from service to service after the New York Times idiotically discontinued it’s original online article-archive function.
Click here to go to diigo.com
So when I list off links at the end of posts, I am often referring the ones I have bookmarked within the last 24 hours, either because I find them significant or plan to read them.
The idea in the first article is that research is supporting the concept of “Self-compassion” as a factor in healthy approaches to living. The second link is more information about the idea itself which apparently originates in Easter philosophies.
First, the muffins were pretty bad. Since beginning this post I have had breakfast with my lovely wife who good-naturedly ate one of them. I had two. Moosewood doesn’t seem to be able to adapt their wonderful recipes very successfully to be low-fat. Darn.
Secondly, I am still plugging away at Little, Big by John Crowley.
Good stuff from last night’s reading:
“Trooty is booth, booth trooty,” He said “that is all ye know on earth, and all …”
“I need to go,” she said. “To the john.”
And I often feel like this:
“It was probably he who had it wrong, who saw it from some peculiar useless personal point of view no one else shared, no one.”
Of course, my wife is extremely supportive and excluded from this sentiment.
I spent quite a bit of time playing Mendelssohn on the piano yesterday. As the day proceeded I seemed to be slipping into mild melancholy.
Later in the day, the local shoe shop called to say a pair of my shoes were ready to be picked up along with the modified insert they had prepared at my request. Oddly, this seemed to be the turning point of my mood and I began to feel better (shopping is genetically a mood restorer for me I guess). I went downtown and bought the shoes, put them on and walked around. I walked to the shop where I buy my coffee beans and bought a pound. Then I went to the music store where a friend of mine works that I haven’t seen in a while. I walked around the store but he was nowhere to be seen.
There seems to be a guy like this in every music store I ever went into.
I played my two afternoon ballet classes in a much better mood.
Last night I had three dreams about my Dad. Between each dream I woke and then fell back asleep.
In the first dream, he had returned from wherever he had been to get Mom. He felt that she would be better off living in Kentucky closer to where he was living in Tennessee. He was flipping through phone books for some reason.
The second dream was Mom’s funeral (she is the living one in reality). I was standing with my Dad, his brother Johnnie and my brother Mark. My Dad said that Johnnie really should do the funeral since he had the best singing voice. I said that Mark actually had the best voice in the family. Mark said his son Ben did and I agreed with that.
My uncle Johnnie has always reminded me of a young Bing Crosby.
In the last dream, my Mom was alive again. Dad was once again returned from wherever he had been. He had decided to use the proceeds from their house sale to buy another house. He wanted to go look at a house that he and Mom had looked at before. Surprisingly the house was only about 29K. Dad thought they should buy something more expensive since they had the money from the house sale plus were pulling in 200K a year.
I tried to dissuade him from taking on Mom’s care pointing out that was the mistake that she had made with him. As I was leaving my brother Mark invited me to sit in a lawn chair for a chat.
My sister-in-law Leigh was dancing around with the ballet star Nureyev. Mark felt that I was making a bad decision to give Dad the power to make his own financial decisions. I countered in the dream that I would lay it all out for Dad and agreed that he was likely to make a bad decision but it was his right to determine his own direction and fate. Meanwhile Leigh danced with Nureyev.
I can’t imagine this stuff that I’m writing interests anyone but it’s all that’s in my head this morning. Rilly rilly interesting, eh?
“Democracy is bad news for terrorists. The more peaceful channels people have to express grievances and pursue their goals, the less likely they are to turn to violence.”
This seems to be an online essay about propaganda. I read a bit of it yesterday while treadmilling.
“…[T]he seven basic propaganda devices: Name-Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon.”
I’m trying to differentiate between logic fallacies and propaganda.
“It is essential in a democratic society that young people and adults learn how to think, learn how to make up their minds. They must learn how to think independently, and they must learn how to think together. They must come to conclusions, but at the same time they must recognize the right of other men to come to opposite conclusions. So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together.”
According to the Writer’s Almanac, today is Robert Lowell’s birthday. I used to read his poetry when I was much younger. Here’s one I liked:
The Literary Life, a Scrapbook
My photo: I before I was I, or a book;
inch-worm! A cheekbone gumballs out my cheek;
too much live hair. My wife caught in that eye blazes,
an egg would boil in the tension of that hand,
my untied shoestrings write my name in the dust…
I rest on a tree, and try to sharpen bromides
to serve the great, the great God, the New Critic,
who loves the writing better than we ourselves….
in those days, if I pressed an ear to the earth,
I heard the bass growl of Hiroshima. No!
In the Scrapbook, it’s the old who die classics:
one foot in the grave, two in books—one of the living!
Who wouldn’t rather be his indexed correspondents
than the boy Keats spitting out blood for time to breath?
It would be tempting to be discouraged about some people’s behavior I experienced at church yesterday. Believe it or not I try not to be too negative in my posts here. I think I was a little discouraged when half of the choir decided to leave the post-service rehearsal.
Three of the people who left were apparently heading to a party, the fourth just left with them. I and four singers remained.
When this sort of thing happens, I try not to let it affect how I treat the people who have chosen to remain.
I told them I wanted to rehearse one more anthem with them. I did so and I think they didn’t leave too discouraged by their fellow singers abandoning the rehearsal so dramatically.
I suspect I only managed to retain the three headed for the party as long as I did in rehearsal because I worked very hard on a motet by Byrd I would like to use at Ash Wed. Before the rehearsal was over I learned that one of the eight singers present couldn’t come on Ash Wed. Two other singers will not be present this weekend which means they would miss a critical rehearsal of this piece.
I would cancel the piece, except I think that doing some of this kind of music is what keeps most of my dwindling number of singers motivated.
I would hate to act in a reactive manner to their behavior and withdraw or postpone the piece, substituting something much easier but less interesting.
At this point I don’t plan to do this. It is a gamble to keep it scheduled.
This is more the way I suspect this choir has operated in the past with some of these singers who do have some adeptness in what they do. For example last week, we “pulled off” a little adaptation of one of Handel’s Chandos anthems.
The performance was the best of our renditions note wise. But since I had to spend all of my time teaching the notes in the pre-service rehearsal I was unable to address the musical subtlety that makes a performance better.
Yesterday we sang a setting of Christina Rossetti’s poetic rendition of the gospel reading called “Consider.” Since we knew this one a bit better, I was able to draw attention to the pure vowels that enable blending. The performance was more in line with what I attempt to do with church choirs.
There were other dismaying moments yesterday.
My family systems mentor the late Ed Friedman would be proud that I continue to try see these incidents as positive indicators of my leadership.
During my post-service rehearsal, several people including my beloved pastor talked so loudly and so long that I was forced to ask them to be quiet so we could hear ourselves sing. I mentioned this before to my boss, but she and the others didn’t quieten down until I told that that we were unable to hear our selves.
That was a moment when I allowed a bit my dismay to show to the choir because it was so obvious and also indicated a level of concentration I try to inculcate in choirs I rehearse.
Earlier during the prelude, I buried my dismay so that I could perform despite the fact that someone was wandering near the organ console and happily whistling away while I performed.
I do know that I had at least one listener to the prelude and the postlude. My wife mentioned that she thought I had played the prelude well. And a parishioner asked if the postlude was Bach and said that he liked it.
In addition the congregation seemed to sing very heartily yesterday and that is always satisfying. I dropped the organ accompaniment to the last stanza to “Jesus, All my gladness” and lightly played the bass line up until the last two measures. Bach chorale settings (of which this hymn is one) always sound to my ears when sung unaccompanied in harmony.
So another day in Jesus’s salt mine I guess. I complained a bit to Eileen after work but then tried to put all this aside for the afternoon. But I was very tired even before I exercised. It takes stamina and energy to keep one’s balance in the face of this sort of thing when you are as thin skinned as I apparently am.
Thanks to Cory Doctorow for pointing this out on Boing Boing. Not very surprising to me that the corporations who are actually the special interests that control our government (not the unions as I heard recently on the radi0) don’t pay a dime in taxes.
I found a link in Ezra Klein’s short Washington Post article to a pdf of what looks like a thoughtful level-headed proposal (pdf) outlining a specific process for evaluating and, if necessary, firing underperforming teachers from Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers. I’ve only just skimmed it so far, but I like what I read in it.
Charles Blow sounds understandably upset about recent Republican recommendations to withdraw funding for natal and pre-natal government research and assistance programs.
Quote:
“It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent to insist that women endure unwanted — and in some cases dangerous — pregnancies for the sake of “unborn children,” then eliminate financing designed to prevent those children from being delivered prematurely, rendering them the most fragile and vulnerable of newborns. How is this humane?”
“[M]ore than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators … say that the threat of global warming, as a man-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter “hoax”…”
“Fred Upton, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said outright that he does not believe that global warming is man-made.”
“John Shimkus of Illinois, who also sits on the committee — as well as on the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment — has said that the government doesn’t need to make a priority of regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, because as he put it late last year, “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.”
“It is very difficult to get a man to understand something when his tribal identity depends on his not understanding it” Michael Bérubé, a literature professor at Penn State aptly quoted in the linked article….
Another excellent article by Nicholas Kristoff pointing out the inherent contradiction in the patronizing stereotype idea that the Arabic world is not ready for democracy.
This is one of two volumes of this man's work I own and play from.
I found a poem by Johann Walther, the composer of the partita I am performing this morning at church.
O day, come yet more often, O! Joyful day!
That day which God gave us thee, o beloved Bach!
We thank him for thee and beseech him for thy life,
so seldom is the world given such a gift!
Bach and Walther were about the same age and apparently were good friends. Bach was godfather to one of Walther’s children (Johann Gottfried). I have to agree with the sentiment of Walther’s poem about Bach.
Perusing through my collection of Walther’s 85 settings of Chorales for the organ, I see that I have performed many of them over the years. They are solidly written and persistently creative.
Lent V falls on April 10 this year. The psalm for the day is Psalm 130 which begins “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord.” I looked at many settings of this psalm for my choir to possibly sing that day. I finally chose Bach’s simple four part chorale version. I find these settings enormously satisfying as do most choirs I have ever worked with.
The translation we are using begins “From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee.”
I also finished a working version of my setting of Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the hills.” This psalm is part of the readings assigned to Lent II (March 20 this year).
My friend, Peter Kurdziel, expressed interest in seeing this piece. I want to clean it up a bit more before handing it off to a colleague. My working version reflects my concern that the choral parts be finished enough to perform, but the keyboard part still needs some polishing which I will probably change on the spot as we rehearse it. Not very helpful to others looking at the piece to perform.
Once again Eileen helped me get multiple anthems photocopied, folded, numbered and stuffed in the choir slots. Afterwards we went out for drinks and “starters” at the pub. Life is good.
Fox continues to hilariously deny its partisanship. Ailes has public ties to many Republican presidential campaigns and subsequent governments beginning with being media advisor for Nixon in ’68 all the way up to and including both Presidents Bush.
Today is really my first day off in two weeks. Unfortunately, I feel like I’m a bit behind in my planning for church so I will definitely have to do some of that today.
Yesterday I agonized over a few measures in the piece I am rewriting. This took quite a bit of time in my already busy schedule. My daily regimen of improvising for ballet class has, I think, increased my melodic skills if only in the realm of the simple (which is where I usually like to work).
So given enough time to ponder I am reasonable confident I can write something that is pretty decent by my standards and represents what I mean to compose.
Re-writing is always harder. And I have given myself the added pressure of composing something in time to rehearse it with my choir and perform it well by March 20th (Lent III). I would dearly like to have it done and duplicated for tomorrow’s rehearsal, but we’ll have to see if the muse is friendly today or not.
The following week (March 27th, Lent IV) I want to perform my transcription of Chanticleer’s “Woman at the Well.” This transcription is basically finished, I just have to add the rest of the alto and tenor parts. This is also on my mind today.
In addition I have to submit hymn recommendations for Ash Wed and Lent. Sheesh.
Krugman says Wisconsin is not Cairo, it’s Baghdad.
From Chile in the 1970s onward, [Naomi Klein]… suggested, right-wing ideologues have exploited crises to push through an agenda that has nothing to do with resolving those crises, and everything to do with imposing their vision of a harsher, more unequal, less democratic society.
Years ago, Ed Friedmann described the effect the hostile environment has on potential leaders, discouraging them before they accept leadership. This story is about a politician I disagree with, but what discourages me is that he sounds like a leader backing away from leadership.
This is in Texas, but we can look forward to more of this nationwide as our increasingly reactionary leadership attempts to dismantle the government and social services.
I didn’t have to “beg” for the check after my gig last night. The man who booked me handed me an envelope half-way through the evening. He is also a musician. Go figure. It’s been a while since someone actually paid me right at a gig without asking. Nice change of pace.
My violinist and I began at 6 PM last night and played on and off for two hours. I managed to adjust the amplifier for the violinist’s mike so that she could be heard over the loud crowd noise without the feedback scream. I played a little baby grand but kept the lid down to balance.
Besides dinner music, we were supposed to have a special number during the awards part of this appreciation dinner for volunteers for the local Community Action House. It wasn’t clear what would be appropriate.
I recommended that we have “Red Sails in the Sunset” ready.
I also thought it might be wise to have a nice classical piece ready as well. I recommended a movement from a solo sonata by Loiellet.
I thought of the first one because local elderly people I have performed for have requested it more than once. The second because Loeillet seems not to have written anything that wasn’t beautiful.
The PR guy there had never head of “Red Sails in the Sunset.” I thought the crowd was a mixture of ages but with many people well-dressed. I recommended the Loeillet and that’s what we did. Amy is a fine violinist and I thought we pretty much “cooked” all night.
I woke up pretty exhausted this morning.
I need to do some composing today as well as my mom’s and my bills. Have been exercising regularly this week.
Treadmilling and Wii Fitting. Changed my silly Wii Fit Plus ™ routine to include more aerobic type exercises. I feel goofy about this but it’s probably good for me.
Tried to have supper ready for Eileen before I left for the gig. The Baked Apples seems to have been the only recipe in the meal I didn’t totally screw up.
Tried to riff on a low fat rendition of Mexican Macaroni and Cheese. Should have followed the recipe.
But the most spectacular failure was the Blueberry Cobbler.
Not this kind of cobbler.And unfortunately not this kind, either.
I tried to substitute 4 cups of frozen blueberries for 2 cups of fresh in a recipe and the dang thing never did cook all the way through. Sigh.
I ran across this recipe when I was trying to reassure myself I could substitute buttermilk for milk in the blueberry cobbler recipe. It looks good to me.
Gail Collins says that ” The House is the deranged Pomeranian that yelps and throws itself against the window and tears up the upholstery 24/7. The Senate, meanwhile, is like a narcoleptic Great Dane you can hardly rouse for dinner.”
But my favorite quote from this article was “There is very little in Washington that can’t be explained by an episode of the original “Star Trek,” and Boehner is playing out the one where the Romulan captain prefers the ways of peace but is saddled with a crew that will mutiny if he fails to follow through on the plan to blow up the galaxy.”
Decided to perform a partita by Johann Walther this Sunday. It’s based on “Jesu Meine Freude.” The version I am working from has 8 variations. Planning to do the last one as the postlude and the chorale and the other seven as the prelude.
I am hearing this piece in more chamber organ way, but this video gives you an idea of the piece. He only plays the theme and six of the variations. I don’t really like the sound this player is choosing on his organ and his interp leaves me wondering why he does certain things. But anyway, there it is.
(I just googled notes inegale and walther and it looks like google has once again changed its search algorithm and not for the better. My top results included pages with the phrase “in eagle” instead of the requested “inegale” and “walter” for “walther.” “Notes inegale” is the term for how the performer on the Youtube video chose to interpret the piece. I wondered if I could find some research on connecting the German composer Walther with the French practice of inegale. Sheesh.)
The melody these variations is based on is one of my favorite hymns. Bach wrote an unbelievable beautiful choral motet on it.
******
The secretary at church has put her draft of the upcoming bulletin in my slot at work on Tuesday evening the last two weeks. This is a good sign. I have continually suggested that it would be easier to work further ahead. I used to do this for the Catholics when I worked for them. I worked two weeks ahead and it saved me much trouble and worry.
Usually I submit most of the information she needs for the bulletin on Tuesday. This Tuesday I chose to do some other things like be with Eileen and do some cooking (see yesterday’s post), so I didn’t get it done in time for the Tuesday edition.
So yesterday when I looked at the draft of the bulletin, the secretary had thoughtfully left some space for the Music Note. I am trying not to overfunction at work and am not planning to do a Music Note for the bulletin every week. But I do see it as one of my most effective education tools. So I sighed and began working on one.
Here’s what I submitted for this Sunday:
Bulletin article for this upcoming Sunday:
Music Note William Cowper, the author of today’s sequence hymn, “Sometimes a light surprises” (Hymnal 1982 #667) was a “shy and sensitive man, given to periods of depression and despair…Through the help of and counsel of friends, however…. the blackness of doubt was replaced by the light of faith, a theme… explored in this hymn.” (Hymnal 1982 Companion) The third stanza refers directly to the gospel for today: “… who gives the lilies clothing will clothe his people, too.” Christina’s poem, “Consider,” is also based on this gospel and serves as the text for the Chamber Choir Anthem at the Offertory. Our first communion hymn, “Peace before us,” was adapted from a Navajo prayer by David Haas. It is taken from Wonder, Love and Praise. Our second communion hymn is “Jesus, all my gladness” Hymnal 1982 #701. This hymn is a classic expression of yearning to abandon “earthly treasure” and make Jesus our master instead of wealth (as mentioned in the first lines of today’s gospel). The organ prelude and postlude today are based on this hymn. “Nada te turbe,” a prayer penned by the 16th century Carmelite nun Teresa of Avila provides the inspiration for today’s closing hymn, “Nothing distress you” taken from Voices Found. It’s reassuring message also echoes today’s “Consider the lilies” idea. Interestingly, the Leader’s Guide to this hymn points out that “perhaps it is no accident that the opening phrase quotes the opening melody from the American hymn, “Blessed Assurance.” Submitted by Steve Jenkins, Music Director.
I can see that I need to edit that last sentence. Probably should read: “Interestingly, the Leaders Guide to Voices Found points out…..”
I will get a chance to do so before it goes to press.
Here’s the words to the anthem Sunday:
Offertory: Consider by Roland Martin
Consider
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—
We are as they;
Like them we fade away,
As doth a leaf.
Consider
The sparrows of the air of small account:
Our God doth view
Whether they fall or mount,—
He guards us too.
Consider
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,
Yet are most fair:—
What profits all this care
And all this coil?*
Consider
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food:—
Much more our Father seeks
To do us good.
*In 16th Century English usage, “coil” refers to tumults or troubles. Used idiomatically, the phrase means “the bustle and turmoil of this mortal life.”
Click on the pic above to read the top 25 news stories that were “censored” in the sense that they were drowned out by the usual propaganda, distortion and spin.
The health care law works its way through the courts. I know there are problems with this law but I am so mortified that America has fallen so far behind other developed countries in providing basic health care for its citizens, that I support this flawed law. I do half expect the right wing conservative Supreme Justice and his colleagues to strike it down.
Brian Coyle, chair of the music department at Hope, was kind enough to loan me his copy of The New Real Book, yesterday. This means that both Amy my violinist and I will have a copy to work from in our Thursday evening gig.
“Real books” began their lives as illegal collections of tunes working musicians needed to have access to. Also called “Fake Books,” they made the transition from expensive illegal contraband to legal college text books in jazz music departments.
While they have plenty of jazz tunes they also have lead sheets for the standards that a lot of jazz is based on. These are the kinds of tunes I am hoping to zero in on for my violinist whose experience of popular music seems to be playing in a wedding string quartet.
Brian also loaned me his CDrom of all six extant Real Books. I went through Vol 4 & 5 last night (The New Real Book II & III) and printed out 2 copies of a bunch of tunes like “Blue Moon” and “Mood Indigo” that I thought might sound nice on violin.
Amy and I are meeting today and will nail down a play list. I also linked her to a couple more classical violin pieces by Telemann and Haydn.
This took quite a bit of time yesterday. I did do some relaxing. I managed to spend a little quality time with Eileen yesterday and then do some cooking while I was exercising.
I adapted this recipe to include meat and veggies I had on hand. Eileen’s meat side of the quiche had bacon and chicken in it. My side was heavy on the sweet red peppers and green onions. It was quite good. By the time I delivered to Eileen for our weekly supper at her work site, I was pretty pooped.
I spent the rest of the evening reading.
I’m about half way through William Cobb’s Substance of Hope and am finding it a brilliant and insightful analysis of Obama’s presidential campaign. I am learning things that I missed (Did you know that Jesse Jackson had an oops moment with the pressing saying he wanted to “cut off Obama’s nuts”? (link to news story from the time) I didn’t.
I have spent my life strongly identifying with Black Americans (as they were known through much of my youth).
In 1972, I cast my first presidential ballot for Shirley Chisholm. I found out in Cobb that the Congressional Black Caucus refused to support her run for president.
Just 12 years earlier my dad was frightened of the liberal ROMAN CATHOLIC Kennedy and cast his vote for Nixon.
Dad’s life journey was one of moving toward the issues of his day. Before he died, Eileen helped him cast his last presidential vote in 2008. We all wondered if his recent infatuation with the TV hate-monger, Lew Dobbs, would influence to vote for McCain.
But he voted for the campaign in which his granddaughter, Elizabeth, was working: Obama.
Cobb devotes a chapter to the Jeremiah Wright period of 2008 campaign (“Of Jeremiah Wright: The Meanign of Change on the South Side of America“) and one to Jesse Jackson’s relationship to it (“The Jesse Problem: The Black President and the President of Black America“). I finished both of them last night.
In the chapter four (“The Black Machine: The Old Guard and the Age of Obama“), he outlines Obama’s relationship to the Civil Rights leaders. Cobb is a brilliant and insightful commentator on contemporary America.
Examples:
Cobb traces Obama’s increasingly obvious strategies of his campaign speeches:
“By turns and degrees his (Obama’s) professorial cadences acquired more gravy, his rhythms came to echo those of the black pulpit, he ditched the occasional auxiliary verb…
“During that spring I saw Obama speak to majority black crowds and majority white ones. He used two vastly differing styles. One was serious and professorial, with an unflappable undercurrent of cool; the other was loose-limbed and colloquial yet with that same air of coolness. The question was note whether Obama was pandering—he absolutely was. The question was which audience he was pandering to.”
Cobb quotes a speech Obama gave in Selma at celebration of the 1965 voting rights march there. He gives it as an example of how the young Obama recast the civil rights movement into his own story and the global story.
Cobbs quote (which precedes the above quote) begins with a dropped auxiliary verb:
Obama speaking to the crowd:
“People been asking, ‘Well, you know, your father was from Africa, your mother, she’s a white woman from Kansas. I’m not sure you have the same experience.’ And I tried to explain, ‘You don’t understand. You see, my grandfather was a cook to the British in Kenya. Grew up in a small village, and all his life, that’s all he was—a cook and a house boy.’ And that’s what they called him, even when he was sixty years old. They called him a house boy. They wouldn’t call him by his last name. Sound familiar?”
Having read The Audacity of Hope, I recognize the Obama in Cobb’s book.
I also can see how the man who wrote the above book transformed into the leader he is now. People on the right often paint him as basically un-American and people on the left as a traitor to the cause. I think a consistency can be traced in his life as a leader even when he takes turns I don’t agree with.
Sunday, Randy Cohen in an answer in his column gave an excellent synopsis of how I see copyright.
“The founders did not design copyright to enrich some colonial Warner Brothers but to make ours a land of innovation. Hence Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution seeks “to promote the progress of the science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Randy Cohen
Article about notes people have written in books they own.
My favorite was Mark Twain’s comment in The Pen and the Book by Walter Besant: “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.”
When I work on Saturday like I did this past weekend, it means that in effect I don’t get a day off for around thirteen days. I’m beginning to feel it this morning. Thank god for coffee.
Hope college remained open for the snowy President’s day yesterday. I played for three dance classes which ended up being four hours on the bench. At the early class, the teacher was one of the advanced students whom I recognized from class. It was fun to see her handle a room full of her peers so well. I learned from her that dancers take a class called “Accompanist,” in which presumably they are taught how to talk to musicians. She agreed that it was much different to actually deal with a live musician. She looked to me for approval which was odd because I just follow the teacher. I told her afterwards she did an excellent job, but what do I know? I’m just a piano player.
One of the students in this class quizzed me about the meter I had used for the last waltz across the floor. This was pretty unusual. Often dancers, students and teachers alike, are a bit nervous talking to musicians. I understand this because musicians can be such dinks. I had used some jazz waltz rhythms and the questioning dancer thought they might be 6/8. Since I am improvising, the time signature is a bit ambiguous (even though as a student I was instructed to always envision a key and time signature when I improvise). I explained to her how I thought of the meter. Later I realized the astuteness of her observation because a jazz waltz often has a six beat rhythmic pattern making it work like 6/8.
Speaking of musicians not being dinks, the chair of the music department who attends my church chatted me up quite affably after church this past Sunday. I don’t want to give the impression that this man and other teachers from the local Christian college are not friendly. Most of them are totally polite.
They just don’t usually talk music with me. This man often smiles and gives me a thumbs up when he sees me. He mentioned to me Sunday that there was a visiting jazz musician who was giving a free concert I might want to attend. Unfortunately the weather prohibited this man arriving yesterday so it wasn’t an option.
Since the chair of the music department is a bit of a jazzer, they have been bringing in major talent to work with the students and give performances. Quite a luxury really in such a small town. The idea that a college in a small town would be a source of intellectual and artistic resources is one of the ostensible reasons Eileen and I chose to live here.
I have an early class today and quite a bit on my plate for the rest of the day, but I’m hoping I will have some time to do a bit of relaxing. I managed to get in my daily regimen of exercise yesterday. This now consists of 30 minutes with Wii Fit Plus program and 40 minutes on the treadmill. I am finding that I feel more relaxed and rested each day I take the time to exercise.
I’ve been thinking about this online storage website. I think it would be foolish to depend on it, but it might make a good second back-up in addition to a hard drive of some sort. Right now I have a lot of stuff I would hate to lose on an exterior hard drive and I keep thinking I should pick-up something to back it up. Carbonite charges $55 dollars a year I think. Hmmmm.
Today is the day I’m supposed to play examples of meters for a quiz for beginning ballet students. I’m thinking of using dances from this book.
I haven’t had much time to explore on the internets, but I did read this article and the next one. The Mount Vernon article is interesting because it talks about the slaves of Washington’s descendants being the ones who ran the museum. The black descendants kept Washington’s ideas about slavery quiet even though some of them were pretty progressive (like he released all his slaves in his will).
They didn’t want to stir things up, I guess. Anyway it’s an interesting article.
I found this music/book review very interesting. Will probably try to get a copy of the novel sometime and read it. Wesley Stace has a career as a indie folk guy (stage name: John Wesley Harding from the album by Dylan). But he also has written three novels, one of them a historical mystery novel of early 20th century English music. The murder victim is an invented interesting composer. Stace utilized Alex Ross (a hero of mine) as a reader on it. Then he had someone write the music of his fictional composer. What’s not to like?
Here’s another picture I found online. Any classical musician will recognize the familiar design stolen from the prestigious Schirmer music publisher.
This is just a step the book cover designer used in creating the final process (link to his site)
Another crazy morning at my church yesterday. People continue to float in and out in odd ways. Two of my musicians skipped the pregame because they were leading other things in the church. I find that sort of defeating. I have complained to the boss but she doesn’t seem to see it quite the way I do (as staff competing with each other for resources rather than god forbid working together), so fuck it.
Bill Bier the sax player did show up and he did wail on the postlude as expected. The little Handel choral rendition of Chandos 4 squeaked by with a respectable performance. It was under rehearsed and I spent all the prep time working on rhythms and notes and didn’t really have time to calibrate the choral sound the way I like to.
“Digo Si Senor” seem to raise the spirits of the congregation but they didn’t really sing it as well as I think they could have. I ran out into the center of the church and tried to cue them. In retrospect I think participation would have gone a bit better if I had done a complete play through of the tune. Live and learn.
Got a phone call from the chair of the ballet department last night asking me to sub on piano for an 8:30 this morning which I immediately agreed to. Combined with my afternoon class it looks about three hours of ballet today. I need to get working on a playlist for a gig for violin and piano on Thursday evening. Also want to finish up those two choral pieces (Psalm 121 and Chanticleer’s rendition of “Woman at the Well”) this week for rehearsal on Sunday. Busy busy.
In the meantime, here’s some book notes:
I listened McChesney interview Jennifer Pozner on her book on the damage Reality TV is doing. (link to page with audio)
Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV outlines the history of “Reality TV” and its insidious retrogression of sexism (misogyny, unrealistic idealizing of women’s bodies and men as jackasses), racism (a return to the minstrel show mentality of people of color as stupid and uncouth), and self-serving sick seduction of viewers by shows designed around products.
A couple of things stood out to me in this program. First that McChesney was well aware that many listeners like myself don’t watch much of this kind of TV. It was almost amusing. Secondly, I learned a new word: Frankenbytes.
Did you know that Reality show voice overs of participants are often just words and phrases they have used in front of the camera cobbled together to say something they never said? I didn’t.
Also Pozner and McChesney have a brief devastating conversation regarding Trump’s show, “The Apprentice.” They point out how he himself is not exactly a successful business man having filed for bankruptcy more than once. And that the practices on the show are not only not how business works but would result in firings and legal action if people acted that way in businesses.
I’m more familiar with the Brit version which I found pretty repelling.
Literature from the Axis of Evil: Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Other Enemy Nations is a title on the New Press’s catalog that caught my eye. My interlibrary-loaned copy came this weekend. In the introduction it points out that “since the 1970s American access to world literature in translation has been steadily decreasing.” Refuting the concept that this is simply a response to market the editors write this lovely sentence:
“The [New York Times 2003 article, “America Yawns at Foreign Fiction] seemed to accept at face value publishers’ contention that only ‘the market’ is to blame, without acknowledging that successful ‘markets’ are cultivated gardens not wild states of nature.”
This reminds me of a paragraph that caught my attention in Schriffin’s book, The Business of Books.
“The recent changes in publishing discussed in these pages demonstrate the application of market theory to the dissemination of culture. After the pattern of Ronald Reagan’s and Margaret Thacher’s probusiness policies, the owners of publishing house have increasingly ‘rationalized their activities.’ The market, it is argued is a sort of ideal democracy. It is not up to the elite to impose their values on readers, publishers claim, it is up to the public to choose what it wants—and if what it wants is increasingly downmarket and limited in scope, so be it….
Traditionally, ideas were exempted from the usual expectations of profit. It was often assumed that books propounding new approaches and different theories would lose money, certainly at the outset. The phrase, ‘the free market of ideas’ does not refer to the market value of each idea. On the contrary, what it means is that ideas of all sorts should have a chance to be put in public, to be expressed and argued fully and not in soundbites.” [emphasis added]
If this makes any sense to you, you might want to check the online magazine, “Words without borders,” [link] co-publisher of The Literature of the Axis of Evil.
The moon was low in the early predawn sky for the drive to Muskegon yesterday. It loomed a bit larger (refraction from the atmosphere, I suspect) and felt like a friendly companion.
Though I got a way a bit late, I was on time for my first student’s scheduled performance time of 8:15 or so. This was my first vocal Solo and Ensemble and they are quite different from the many instrumental ones I have attended.
The most startling thing to me is that each singer gets a warm-up period alone in a room with a piano and his teacher. At instrumental solo and ensembles, warm-up rooms are crowded and noisy as several people warm-up at once.
There was only one of the seven students I played for yesterday that didn’t go all the way through their two numbers in the warm-up room as preparation for the judging session. Many of these benefited from this last minute run through.
One of my scheduled singers had an appendectomy the night before and of course could not attend. No one mentioned this to me until I began to ask after him when he was my next scheduled soloist. Most of the students were prepared to pay me their half of my fee. The vocal teacher, Joel, forgot my check for the Booster’s half. He assured me he would mail it immediately.
Once again I am begging people to pay me for my work. I guess that’s just the lot of the older weird looking outsider type music guy.
To be fair most of these people treat me with much more respect and appreciation than the local yokels both in the little town of Holland Michigan. And since money has been a concern for me all my life, I think I am a bit over sensitive around these issues and try not to act weirder than is necessary.
The treat of the day for me was that my old friend, Peter Kurdziel, was also accompanying and we managed to have several nice chats together.
At the last event of the day, the choir director gave me a bunch of roses. It’s hard to feel unappreciated holding roses. Heh.
I drove home and grabbed something to eat then Eileen accompanied me over to the church to prep for today. I had to make some (legal) photocopies for today’s post service rehearsal and stuff them and other pieces in choir slots for my choristers for today.
I also needed to rehearse playing the anthem since the choir seemed pretty sketchy on it last week. It’s a 2-part (men against women as I like to say) rendition Handel’s Fourth Chandos Anthem, “O Worship the Lord.” I practiced soloing out both the men’s and women’s part with my left and right hand. It’ll probably go fine today.
I didn’t need to rehearse the prelude and postlude because GELO (Grace Episcopal Liturgical Orchestra formerly the Grace Electric Light Orchestra) is making its 2011 debut and is playing those parts of the service.
I was happy to hear that the excellent sax player, Bill Bier, will be joining us for the postlude rendition of Donna Pena’s “Digo, si, Senor.” He will most likely do some wailing on that.
I spent several hours working with choral music for the upcoming season at my church yesterday. I decided to re-write an old setting of mine of Psalm 121. This is the psalm for one of the upcoming Sundays in Lent. It begins “I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where shall come my help?” It always makes me think of my maternal grandmother, Thelma.
Thelma lived in South Charleston, West Virginia.
I have many childhood memories of traveling from Greeneville, Tennessee and later Flint, Michigan to West Virginia to visit my Mom’s family. I see in retrospect that Thelma was a bit of a character. She actually had life pretty good in some ways. Her son and his family lived a few doors down. One of her two daughters lived across the street with her family. Thelma doted on them and their children.
My Mom left West Virginia as a young woman to attend the bible college of her denomination in Anderson, Indiana.
She recently told me she cried every night for months with homesickness. But refused to give in to it and stuck it out in the new setting. She must have been the first of her family to attend college. She never returned to live in West Virginia where her sister and brother lived.
I never noticed the inevitable tensions between my Mom and her Mom until I was an adult. As a child I always felt welcome in all three homes on Central Avenue in South Charleston.
And of course everybody was pretty religious. They worried about each other’s souls. Were you truly “saved”? Would they get to see you in heaven? That sort of thing. Needless to say, they worried about my Mom’s preacher husband and his new fangled ideas from time to time.
I have a memory of my grandmother, Thelma, saying the words of Psalm 121. As a kid, I thought she meant that she was actually getting strength from her beloved mountains of West Virginia. I later discovered that this is not what the psalm means. The speaker is looking at the hills feeling daunted. The strength is coming “from the Lord.”
When Thelma’s buy valium manila husband, my gentle grandfather, Jim, died, I seem to recall the use of this psalm in the funeral. My most vivid memory was of my brother and I carrying our grandmother (and her wheelchair?) from the car to the Jim’s open grave site. This was necessary because that part of W. Virginia is all hills and mountains so that even the graveyards are on pretty steep inclines.
This was also truly also of Central Avenue where the Midkiff (My Mom’s fam) lived.
Anyway, I wrote this psalm setting a while back and intended to try to get it published with a dedication for my grandparents, Jim and Thelma. It was never published. I don’t think I ever did more than perform it with my choir at the time and think about submitting it to a publisher.
It’s been so long since I wrote it that I am having to completely rewrite it to make it acceptable. It’s fun, but time consuming. I want to have some anthems ready to rehearse with my choir this coming Sunday. This anthem won’t be one of them. But I think I’ll get it revised in time to rehearse and perform.
Another anthem that I want to use that won’t be ready this Sunday is Chanticleer’s gospel setting of “The Woman at the Well.”
This another project from past years. It’s a great setting. Chanticleer is a marvelous choral group whose recordings range from pop to classic and everything in between.
I have always admired their a cappella rendition of this old gospel tune. I transcribed the melody and the bass line back when I was working for the Catholics and used it as an anthem. It tells the story of the gospel reading of one the upcoming Sundays of Lent.
My old transcription doesn’t have the alto and tenor part in it, so again this is going to require a bit of work. I have been listening to the recording and think it would be pretty easy to add the missing parts so that my present choir could perform it.
I have to break off here and get ready to drive to Muskegon….
Before beginning ballet class yesterday, the teacher asked me if I would talk to the dancers about how musical meter works. She would be reviewing with them for their first written exam next week in class. In one portion of this exam, she was planning on having me play triple/duple meter excerpts for the dancers to identify as such. She thought it would be helpful if I explained and demonstrated the concepts. Which I did.
What a pleasure to be asked to do something like this. The ballet department has consistently noticed and utilized my abilities as a musician and improviser. The music department at Hope has kept me at arm’s length since I arrived here in 1987. Now. the teachers are younger, more competent, and less intolerant than when I arrived. But for the most part, they have seemed disinterested in me as a fellow musician.
I don’t mean to bitch about this at length. But a couple of examples come readily to mind. About five or six years ago, I took a choral composition of mine to the choir director at this college. I thought he might be interested in either actually performing it or discussing it. I tried to open a conversation with him. I thought he was going to get back with me. I never saw him again until he was sitting on a hiring committee at the church I now work. I see him regularly. He has never once mentioned the work to me.
I think it’s a pretty good composition but would welcome a critical discussion of it or even a quick critical comment. I’m not even sure he remembers that I approached him.
In another instance, about seven years ago or so , I decided it would be fun to tutor music theory at the college level.
Being a composer, music theory is a strong suit of mine. I almost took a teaching assistantship at Southern Methodist to pursue upper degrees in it. (Glad I didn’t because things have worked out so well for Eileen and me in Holland) I thought it would be polite to at least let the head of the music theory department at Hope know that I would be posting signs around offering to help music students with their theory. He was polite but cool. Again when I got my job at my present church, he was a member. But even though I asked his jazz trio to perform at service and even read his book on jazz theory, he remained distant and cool. Eventually he and his wife stopped coming to this church, so who knows?
There are many stories I can tell like this.
"I could tell you some stories." one of many great lines from the movie Barton Fink
It’s not that big a deal to me. I am thinking of it now mostly because a couple of things have happened (like the ballet teacher asking me to briefly co-teach with her), that are in contrast to most of my experience in Western Michigan with connecting with college types.
I received a phone call from Jim Piersma, the husband of the violinist in my piano trio. He wondered if I was interested in performing with her at an upcoming volunteer appreciation dinner for his organization (Community Action House – a local charity that helps people with food and housing).
He offered me $100. I hate to be so plebeian as to instantly mention money, but his phone call was in such stark contrast to the way the Grand Haven Choral Department contracted (negotiated) with me for fees. I instantly said yes. Amy, the violinist I work with and Jim’s wife, and I were already scheduled for an afternoon rehearsal yesterday, so we rehearsed a few things and talked about some other tunes to put on the performance list for this gig.
I’ve also been booked to do a couple of upcoming jazz gigs.
Many of the music profs at Hope right now are into jazz. I have attempted to have conversations with them about jazz and asked them questions, but again, they are polite but keep me at arm’s length. I feel like the ragged old hippie local yokel guy. Worse things to be, I think. Heh.
The upcoming jazz gigs were booked by the Zeeland High School music teacher, Keith Walker. I have known him for years as a pretty good trumpet player and even hired him once in a while. Last year, I hired his talented high school aged son to play bass for me. Since then I am sort of in their orbit and Keith has booked me to play with his son’s group when their keyboard player can’t make the gig. Very flattering.
Since I’m being all upbeat and shit, another cool thing happened to me yesterday. I contacted my friend and colleague, Peter Kurdziel. (I do have colleagues just not so much at Hope or other local colleges, heh) Peter lives in Muskegon which is where my Solo and Ensemble festival is being held Saturday. I have a huge gap of time with nothing to do (from 10 AM to 3 PM) and thought maybe we could have lunch.
It turns out that Peter will actually be in the building doing what I’m doing (accompanying singers) and that there are some nice restaurants near the school where we can sneak off for food and conversation. Woo hoo!
I have been writing a practice fugue just to sharpen my fugue chops. I put it down for about a week. Returned to it yesterday for a bit.
My file organization of my Finale (music notation) files paid off this week. Preparing for Tuesday evening’s rehearsal, I thought it would nice to have my instrumental ensemble play a different version of our Communion Hymn Sunday to serve as the prelude. I went poking through the files looking to see if I had transcribed the melody. Not only had I done so, it was already in the version I needed. Cool beans.
I also discovered the switch in the Finale software that will add capo chords to all of the guitar chords in document at once. This was the first time I didn’t have to go through all of the chords and add the capo chord. Sweet. I wonder how long this has been a possibility in this software which the church recently paid to update.
I accompanied 16 songs last night in a mini-recital. I like working with young musicians. I arrived a little after 6 looking for a singer whom the vocal teacher said would meet with me for a last minute rehearsal. Neither the singer or the teacher was anywhere to be seen. I later learned they were sitting in the audience of the first recital of the evening.
According to the email from the choral director who contracted with me for this gig, the recital would start at 7 PM. It actually started at 6:30 so there was not much time for working with any singers beforehand. But I did manage to go through a few with some of them.
It was interesting to see how young performers respond to the pressures of the solo concert situation. Almost all of them had potential for good performances. Some of the most frightened did the best. Some of the performances were strongly affected (singing sharp for most of the song, skipping around in the song). Some were very ill-prepared to the point where I had to play the melody for them. Some were confident and performed well.
I have to wonder how I am going to get paid. Two more students gave me checks last night which brings the total to three so far. I suspect the students and their parents think that the $25 they pay me is my fee. But the choral director contracted for an additional $25 per student to be provided by the Choral Boosters. I find it discouraging to think that these young people (and their parents) think what I am doing is worth $25. All of these people treat me with more respect than I usual seem engender in Holland people. But I wish this translated into raising the standards of remuneration for artistic endeavors. But toujour gai, archie, toujours gai!
This brings me to today’s poem on the Writer’s Almanac website:
Art Sanctuary by Niki Giovanni
I would always choose to be the person running
rather than the mob chasing
I would prefer to be the person laughed at
rather than the teenagers laughing
I always admired the men and women who sat down
for their rights
And held in disdain the men and women who spat
on them
Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are
safe
Art offers Sanctuary to everyone willing
to open their hearts as well as their eyes
Music offers this as well. One of my achieved goals last night was to lead the singers and the listeners into the experience of music. When one singer destroyed the song with lapses, I persisted musically even in the little solo piano section that ended the piece and left the listeners with the possibility of a refreshing ending moment even as they witnessed the painful spectacle of a ill-prepared and humiliated young musician.
I listened to the President’s news conference on my MP3 player this morning.
Here are links mostly but not all on my to be read list.
by Katha Pollitt whom I have been reading for years. Her basic point is that the education problem is not a policy problem but a poverty problem.
telling quote:
“The biggest barrier to educational achievement today is not any of the things the media talk endlessly about: poorly prepared teachers, badly run schools, too many tests, low standards. It’s child poverty—which, like poverty in general, has just dropped out of the discourse.
Here’s a couple of links from totally different points of view.
The first one (by Scott Turow) I totally disagree with. Nowhere in this article on the supposed consequences of cavalier treatment of intellectual property does he mention the dramatic lengthening of the period of copyright that benefits not living creators but mostly corporations like Disney.
Spent several hours yesterday working on stuff for this Sunday. We are singing Donna Peña’s big Roman Catholic hit, “Digo, ‘Si,’ Señor (I say yes, my Lord) as the hymn before the gospel (the Episcopalians refer to this as the sequence hymn).
It’s a catchy Sergio Mendez type melody. I rehearsed it last night with my volunteers that I call my Grace Episcopal Liturgical Orchestra. (Last night we consisted of 5 people including me. Sunday we’ll be playing guitars, bass, viola, congas, maracas, tambourine, and piano.)
St. Louis Jesuits circa the 70s
Like the St. Louis Jesuits in their popular church tune, “Be not afraid,” Peña begins the verses (sung by the choir or the cantor) with very quick notes. And she has chosen not to write a strictly recurring number of syllables per verse. For years, I have listened to congregations mellow out the jerkiness of “Be not afraid,” and sing the rhythms differently than written. I have concluded that the congregations are wise in this and have followed these ideas in my adaptation of the song for Sunday.
I also broke down and wrote a bulletin article for this Sunday. This took up a good portion of the morning. I have been having conversations with my boss for the last few years about the way my job is getting bigger and bigger with no commiserate change in pay. Since beginning my work, she and I have added task after task to my job. Last year I asked how my job would look different if it was full time. Neither of us could come up with more than that she would feel more comfortable to ask me to take on a little bit more work like forming a young adults’s choir or handbell choir (both of which in moments of frustration and weakness I have offered to do for no increase in pay, but she, godblessher, helped me resist).
I also have brought to her attention that by professional standards I am being paid about half of what is fair for my education, background and abilities.
I began writing the silly bulletin article (I’ll put the one I wrote for this Sunday below so you can read it if you’re interested) when I realized that I sort of automatically check out the history of the hymns and music I use at work. Often this elucidates the reason they are used. I thought I might as well put some background information in the weekly bulletin occasionally.
When I started doing this, I learned from listening to parishioners that even astute worshipers were surprised by how connected and coherent the changing parts of the service (the readings, the hymns, the choral anthems) usually are. Pointing this connection out via the bulletin article seemed to be a no brainer.
But it turned into an absorbing task that I don’t always pull off every week.
Found this on the internets. It's not exactly what my boss and I have been talking about, but it is interesting to me.
So since my boss and I aren’t finding ways to help me fix my dilemma, we started discussing the “energy pie” of staffs (including her as priest) when a church community is changing from a small pastoral size to a larger program size but doesn’t adjust it’s staff accordingly.
We are both troubled by this stuff. But I am improving so slowly in this that it seems they are not going to change.
Part of my solution is initiating the frank discussions we have been having about where I am most effective in my work and to consider trimming or changing my approaches in the other areas.
My little orchestra is an area where I feel like I’m not all that effective. I was able initially to get a pretty enthusiastic response last year. But this year, the enthusiasts were probably all in attendance last evening.
Since I anticipated this, I intentionally put a lot less preparation into the organization. I’m not sure if all of these few people will continue to be interested not because of this, but because it is a challenge for them. But I think I pulled last night off okay.
My challenge today begins at 3 PM with 2 & 1/2 hours of ballet class followed by a 6 PM last minute rehearsal with a young singer before a two hour recital of accompanying him and 7 other singers. Whew! I hope my energy holds up.
One quote caught my eye in this article: ““People are so enamored of the technology,” said Michael H. Posner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. “People have a view that technology will make us free. No, people will make us free.”
Hmmm. I thought that it was the “truth” that did that. I AM getting religioius.
Chevron makes me crazy because their PR is so disconnected from their actions. I yell at their ads every time I watch the PBS news hour which they sponsor. They are of course contesting the suit brought against them by the Ecuadorian forest tribes and villagers. Sure looks like David and Goliath to me. Make that GREEDY David.
little quote: “Almost lost in the various disputes related to the lawsuit is the fact that Chevron and plaintiffs have agreed that oil exploration contaminated what had been largely undeveloped swaths of Ecuadorean rainforest.”
I was struck by this sentence and the idea it drives home in this editorial:
” Republicans, who now dominate the House, are obsessed with making indiscriminate short-term cuts in programs they never liked anyway. The Republican cuts would eviscerate vital government functions while not having any lasting impact on the deficit.”
Arts and Letters Daily http://www.aldaily.com/ (where I found this link) described it this way: “Montaigne’s self-absorption feels contemporary, but he was no proto-blogger. He aimed for self-discovery, not self-display…”
I’m a big Montaigne fan, but also wondered about the self-display aspect of blogging. I know that people who blog and tweet and facebook are often stereotyped as revealing stuff no one needs to know like what they had for lunch. But still I like the connections online both personal and reference library stuff.
Finally for the diehards, here’s my bulletin article:
Music notes: “Love your enemies,” Jesus says in today’s gospel, “pray for those who persecute you.” We begin today’s service with Charles Wesley’s great hymn of love and compassion, “Love, divine, all loves excelling” (No. 657 in The Hymnal 1982). Our sequence hymn comes from the pen of the Minnesota liturgical composer, Dona Pe?a. We blend Spanish and English today as we digo, “si,” (say yes) to the God of the oppressed (verse 1) and to loving enemies and to peace in the world (verse 2). This hymn is taken from My Heart Sings Out, the 2004 Episcopalian Hymnal “designed for all-age worship, with the aim of the full inclusion of children in weekly worship” (from Church Publishing’s website). “Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love” (No. 602 in The Hymnal 1982) reminds us that Jesus, himself, models for us the love we are called to. We repeat Carl Daw’s excellent Eucharist hymn, “As we gather at your table, this week to continue to make it part of our repertoire of familiar hymns. It is taken from Wonder, Love and Praise. Voices Found, the Episcopal hymnal of hymns “for, by, or about women,” provides us with another new hymn, “God of Freedom.” This hymn was written for Amnesty International’s Campaign Against Torture in 1980 (see the mention of “torture’s terror” in the second verse). The closing verse begins, “Make in us a captive conscious quick to hear, to act, to speak” and ends asking to be taught “to be fully human, open to each other’s needs.” Thus we conclude our prayer remembering in our song Christ’s challenges to live out the love of God in the way we treat each other. submitted by Steve Jenkins, Music Director.
When I was a teenager, my parents had this picture on the wall.
For many years (in my 30s & 40s), I used to pray everyday. I used to get up in the morning and pray morning prayer with a healthy dose of psalms. I usually managed to get evening prayer in some time in the evening as well.
I can’t remember exactly but I think I read about 20 psalms a day in the course of these prayers.
I used the Episcopalian book to do this. In retrospect it feels like a quietly desperate attempt to stay in contact with a part of myself that had to be hidden in my work with the Roman Catholics.
The Catholics have strict rules about who can and cannot receive communion. Being a professional church person working for the Catholics, I was well versed in those rules as well as many other things about Catholicism.
I violated the rules of the club reluctantly. So I only received Communion a few times in Catholic situations even though other Catholics often found this puzzling.
That was then. Now the Roman Catholics (especially the bishops and the pope) seem much more comfortable with limiting who takes communion with them.
So this means all the years I worked in the Roman Catholic church, I and my family chose not to convert and did not participate in the central rite of this church. I mean I did everything except actually receive communion. It was part of my professional understanding of public prayer that leaders of prayer “adopt the entire posture of the prayer.”
This means lead and encourage participation.
Billy Sunday (1862-1935) click on the pic for his wikipedia article
The daily prayer of the Christian Church is sometimes referred to as the “Office.” This comes from officium which means duty. I saw prayer as an extension of my own musical discipline.
Praying so many psalms over the years, I came to really love them. I still do. I had a conversation recently with a professor who insisted that he primarily sees the psalms as Christian. I was saying to him that when I prayed them daily I tried to see them more the way they were intended. Scholars have phrase for this: sitz im leben.
Unsurprisingly this had little effect on my listener.
But now I’m likely to get up in the morning and reach for a book of poetry.
That’s what I did this morning. I keep all of my poetry books together in several bookcases. So I can run my eyes over books of poetry that have been with me all my life and ones that I have acquired more recently.
This morning as I reached for a book, I saw several by an author who was a favorite of an old acquaintance with whom I have not had a conversation for many, many years. It reminded that I had dreamed of him last night. The sudden remembering of this and the memory itself felt like a poem.
I spent most of yesterday waiting to see if the teacher organizing the vocal recital Wednesday was going to call and schedule rehearsal times with me and his students. I emailed him a couple of times. Called his cell and left a message. His responses did not make it clear what was going to happen that schedule-wise.
The little city where these rehearsals is about 20 minutes away. Finally he called my land line and we agreed that I would only meet with one student an hour before the performance tomorrow evening. This student is the one who is the least prepared and is, of course, doing the most challenging music.
This did not make for a very relaxing day. Mondays are usually hard for me anyway. I find that performing at church takes a great deal of energy especially the way I do it, immersing myself in the execution of the music whether improvised or prepared.
Interestingly, my ballet classes are just the opposite. I find it therapeutic to be a musical fly on the wall. Sort of an mildly artistic metronome, making up melodies and tunes that are most always in symmetrical phrases.
My little Christian college is on break and I think I almost missed dragging myself over to the studio and improvising for two and half hours yesterday.
No ballet today either, but I have to prep for a rehearsal with instrumentalists from church this evening. I put out a call for another gathering instrumentalists and received a discouragingly low number of responses. My boss and I agreed that I would put less energy into this ensemble this year. So I’m trying to do that. No fancy composition for these guys tonight. Nosirree.
A couple books I ordered came in the mail yesterday:
I like this cookbook because at this time I’m keeping an informal eye on my caloric intake and slowly losing a bit of weight. I bought it used through Amazon.
My copy of this looks like one of the two above. It’s an old paperback in good shape but is both volumes in one. Myrdal was a Swedish social economist who examined the United States racism and other social problems in the 50s. Since I am already a bit of a fan of De Tocqueville, this attracted me. It looks very interesting. I got this book using my earned credits at paperbackswap.com.
I saw William Cobb on a C-Span presentation recently. He really impressed me with his historical perspective on the present moment in the United States. I interlibrary-loaned this book to see what it was like. Read a bit in it last night and his prose is a bit stiff but I am interested to see what he says about Obama and Jeremiah Wright.
This op-ed piece by Roger Cohen poses the idea that what is happening in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries could be a positive opportunity for the U.S.
The use of the word, “commission,” in this headline/link is a bit confusing. I haven’t read the whole article yet, but commission is used I believe in the sense of “committing” journalism. See quote:
From the update at the end of the article: ” [W]hat matters is that factually false statements are clearly designated and documented as such, not treated as merely “one side of the story” deserving neutral and respectful airing on equal footing with the truth.”
